Objectives and Requirements

It is impossible to find a patent formula for the systematic and scientific establishment of archaeological objectives on excavations, as no two excavations are alike. For the excavations themselves, EDP is nothing more than an advanced and efficient technical tool and aid. The basic content of documentation technologies does not change, of course. Some tasks remain essential to scientific documentation and are independent of the technologies deployed. These tasks include the scientific interpretation and conversion of scaled plan recordings, descriptions and possible colouration and stratigraphic and contextual interpretation. Therefore, when working out which digital documentation technology would be the most efficient and if conventional and modern technologies can be usefully combined or not, the decision making process differs from case to case depending on the personnel and hard and software available. It is absolutely essential to have a computer station with peripheral equipment (printer/plotter) on site at the excavation so that the documentation can be kept up to date and digital plans can be constantly monitored.

Fig. 1 Office container with CAD station, laser printer and total station

The computers should be portable for reasons of safety on account of their expense. High-capacity CAD programs require high-performance computers from the cutting edge of hardware development. Additional smaller computer stations or portable computers have also proved to be useful for database-supported recording of management data.

The current recommendation for CAD stations is a Pentium lll / lV computer with 256 MB RAM, approx. 10-20 GB hard drive and a fast CAD graphics card. The basic equipment for the necessary CAD central station in the office should include a DIN A3 colour scanner, a laser printer and a DIN A0 plotter. The surveying equipment should consist of a total station and other additional accessories. Our basic software currently consists of a Microsoft Windows NT Version 4.0 operating system, AutoCAD as a platform for our CAD program and Microsoft Access for our database program.

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